[Yogi]

http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/alberta ... 97651.html


This guy has screwed the whole system up from the beginning. This the best they could do for the money???
Raj Sherman would be the perfect replacement!

[Thanos]

Good riddance. The guy was the definition of an obtuse and clueless moron.

Given the Stelmach team's track record thus far they'll probably find someone even worse though.

Alberta: it's still an awesome province to live in (despite the people who are running it).

[Scape]

I was amazed he lasted this long.


I'm eating my cookie! What a pompous ass.

http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/ ... algaryHome

[DrCaleb]

There once was a girl from Nantuckett . . .

No, wait . . .too easy.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[Chumley]

I wonder what his severence package was?

[Yogi]

Chumley Chumley:

I wonder what his severence package was?

Details of Duckett’s payout were not released, but Hughes said the board will “meet the obligations in his contract.”

If turfed without just cause, Duckett’s contract stipulates he must be paid a severance equal to one year’s pay plus 15%.

He’s also eligible for up to $20,000 in moving expenses back to Australia, where he was recruited from.

Duckett was hired in March 2009 with a base salary of $575,000.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Wait a sec..they recruited someone from Australia??? You mean out of 35 million ppl in Canada not ONE of them was qualified for the position?

[Yogi]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Wait a sec..they recruited someone from Australia??? You mean out of 35 million ppl in Canada not ONE of them was qualified for the position?

That's AHC's story, and they're stickin too it! The little bit I have heard from some real health care professionals is that he fucked things up so bad in Oz, that they were quite willing to pay his one-way fare to anywhere! He'll be hard pressed to find employment in the industry back home.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Yogi Yogi:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Wait a sec..they recruited someone from Australia??? You mean out of 35 million ppl in Canada not ONE of them was qualified for the position?

That's AHC's story, and they're stickin too it! The little bit I have heard from some real health care professionals is that he fucked things up so bad in Oz, that they were quite willing to pay his one-way fare to anywhere! He'll be hard pressed to find employment in the industry back home.

Oh great, so now they're hiring foreigners, and ones that are known to be incompitent to boot, to run/oversee health care. Fucking brilliant

[Regina]

This is the first time that I've heard of the "Cookie" thing and I don't know of this man. But since when did it become a crime to tell a reporter to politely piss off? That's basically what he did, yet because it ends up on YouTube he gets fired? Sounds like its been a real mess for quite some time, but in my experience it's usually the politicians and life long democrats who are to blame.



Alberta Health Services has become a joke.

"Thanks to an endless series of “knucklehead” decisions (to quote renegade MLA Raj Sherman), not so much by Mr. Duckett as his political masters, a decentralized patient-centred health system has been transformed into a centralist, patient-contemptuous health system."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/hea ... le1812126/

[Choban]

The sun reported yesterday that firing him would cost us about 600K
Not sure Raj Sherman is the best choice to replace him, a notable critic of the system who in the end would be powerless to fix such a broke system, though he's welcome to try as outside of actual medical professionals no one else seems to have any ideas.

Health care has been an issue in this province for almost 20 years now, and alot of us saw no good in creating this so called "Superboard" to govern it.

[Chumley]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Yogi Yogi:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Wait a sec..they recruited someone from Australia??? You mean out of 35 million ppl in Canada not ONE of them was qualified for the position?

That's AHC's story, and they're stickin too it! The little bit I have heard from some real health care professionals is that he fucked things up so bad in Oz, that they were quite willing to pay his one-way fare to anywhere! He'll be hard pressed to find employment in the industry back home.

Oh great, so now they're hiring foreigners, and ones that are known to be incompitent to boot, to run/oversee health care. Fucking brilliant

You would almost think they are trying to sabotage the existing system...

[DrCaleb]

Regina Regina:

This is the first time that I've heard of the "Cookie" thing and I don't know of this man. But since when did it become a crime to tell a reporter to politely piss off? That's basically what he did, yet because it ends up on YouTube he gets fired? Sounds like its been a real mess for quite some time, but in my experience it's usually the politicians and life long democrats who are to blame.

He had just come from a high level meeting regarding the state of ER care (big button issue). A reporter asked him a question about the meeting, and as head of AHS, he is obliged to answer the question, not blow the reporter off with a snotty remark. He could have just said 'no comment' instead of 'I'm eating my cookie'. That was just the icing though.

That he cut jobs so deeply that ER care is in the state it's in (because his yearly bonuses were tied to cutting costs, not performance) is the reason he's fired.

[billypilgrim]

$1:

That he cut jobs so deeply that ER care is in the state it's in (because his yearly bonuses were tied to cutting costs, not performance) is the reason he's fired.

exactly. the cookie blowoff more just confirmed his asshole character which fueled his chop and hack approach to managing our emergency services.

[Scape]

Regina Regina:

This is the first time that I've heard of the "Cookie" thing and I don't know of this man. But since when did it become a crime to tell a reporter to politely piss off? That's basically what he did, yet because it ends up on YouTube he gets fired? Sounds like its been a real mess for quite some time, but in my experience it's usually the politicians and life long democrats who are to blame.



Alberta Health Services has become a joke.

"Thanks to an endless series of “knucklehead” decisions (to quote renegade MLA Raj Sherman), not so much by Mr. Duckett as his political masters, a decentralized patient-centred health system has been transformed into a centralist, patient-contemptuous health system."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/hea ... le1812126/

The cookie was the straw that broke the camels back. This was a long time in coming and wasn't the 1st time he had displayed indifference to the public. However, he is just a symptom of a MUCH larger problem:

Alberta Health Services has become a joke

$1:

There was a time – in the days before YouTube – when public figures could get away with lapses of judgment. Mr. Duckett could even be forgiven his channelling of a beloved Sesame Street character, except that Alberta’s system is a lot worse off than it was when he was hired 18 months ago.

What was inarguably the best health system in Canada is now in shambles. The way that ER wait times have ballooned is symbolic of a lack of leadership. The morale of health professionals is at an all-time low. The much-needed investment in infrastructure has slowed dramatically. Stumbling around aimlessly seems to have become the modus operandi.

It’s easy to blame Mr. Duckett for those woes, especially since he comes across as haughty and acerbic, even when he’s not wielding an oatmeal weapon. The reality is that he was given an impossible job: to cut health spending and restructure the provincial health system from top to bottom.

Worse yet, Mr. Duckett was given little political support. Almost every time he made a change that was unpopular, he was second-guessed by the Health Minister and the Premier.

He was also paid poorly. And, yes, a $575,000 base salary and performance bonuses of $76,619 are chintzy, at least relatively; it’s less than any CEO of an Ontario hospital receives. It will cost the province about a year’s salary to fire him.

When Mr. Duckett is turfed, foes of restructuring would do well to hold the applause. The fundamental problem will remain: The government of Premier Ed Stelmach has absolutely no vision for health care. It seems to have nothing but a half-baked idea on how the system should be structured.

All it has offered up are vague corporatist platitudes about creating a “21st-century health system” that is “lean and mean” and more “effective and efficient” – as if the health system is a cookie factory where you can trim a little sugar and flour to make a cheaper product.

Alberta had, in the past decade or so, created the best, most innovative health system in Canada. Regionalization allowed health authorities to shape services to local needs, created better continuity of care, made the system more responsive, improved public health and led to strong alliances between university researchers and health regions. There was also some healthy competition between regions that benefited patients.

But regionalization also created powerful, independent health leaders such as Sheila Weatherill of Edmonton and Jack Davis of Calgary, who used their influence to push for massive infrastructure investment, new research funding and ever-larger health budgets.

Mr. Stelmach blew up the structure and replaced the regional health authorities with a single “superboard” to oversee all health-care services in the province. The move was motivated principally by petty politics. Mr. Davis and Ms. Weatherill had become so powerful that they were perceived as threats, not to mention that their politics did not align perfectly with those of Mr. Stelmach’s rural conservatism.

What Alberta got was political revenge posing as health reform and fiscal prudence.

Mr. Duckett was simply the mercenary hired to do the dirty work on the ground.

Thanks to an endless series of “knucklehead” decisions (to quote renegade MLA Raj Sherman), not so much by Mr. Duckett as his political masters, a decentralized patient-centred health system has been transformed into a centralist, patient-contemptuous health system.

When the final calculation is done, it will probably show that a lot more money has been wasted than saved. The experiment – or whatever it was – is a failure.

Now, Mr. Duckett is eating the cookie, health workers are being left to pick up the crumbs and the public is getting the shaft.

Mr. Stelmach’s response to cookiegate has been to say he is “tired of the theatrics” in health care. He should be less concerned with appearances and more focused on instituting public policies that allow for the delivery of prompt, high-quality health care in a cost-effective manner.

Fixing this mess is going to be a lot more painful than creating it. It requires leadership and a strong stomach. In the immortal words of the Cookie Monster: “Om nom nom nom.”